"Will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift, and that
to repulse gratuitous gifts is to repulse riches under pretence of
encouraging the means of obtaining them?
"Take care--you carry the death-blow to your own policy. Remember that
hitherto you have always repulsed foreign produce, _because_ it was an
approach to a gratuitous gift, and _the more in proportion_ as this
approach was more close. You have, in obeying the wishes of other
monopolists, acted only from a _half-motive_; to grant our petition
there is a much _fuller inducement_. To repulse us, precisely for the
reason that our case is a more complete one than any which have
preceded it, would be to lay down the following equation: + x + = -; in
other words, it would be to accumulate absurdity upon absurdity.
"Labor and Nature concur in different proportions, according to
country and climate, in every article of production. The portion of
Nature is always gratuitous; that of labor alone regulates the price.
"If a Lisbon orange can be sold at one hundredth the price of a New
York one, it is because a natural and gratuitous heat does for the
one, what the other only obtains from an artificial and consequently
expensive one.
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